*I received this ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*

I think the concept was really interesting and cool, placing a piano at the centre of the novel, crossing characters and timelines and countries. The characters were a bit difficult to like though, and left me feeling a tad ambivalent towards the story's outcome. I enjoyed the reveal of how the piano connected certain people together, but overall I wasn't particularly moved by this.

A lovely story a story about a piano family music.I was swept away by this book a very special story.#netgalley#The weight of a piano.#knopfdoubleday.

What a good read. Basing the story around a piano and intertwining the characters to it was entertaining and complex. Liked the different characters. Good story flow. Really enjoyed this book and would recommend!

Deeply moving. A tad long in the descriptions. In-depth characters and lovely musical inferences. It was a beautiful symphony of words and images. I can't wait for this to become a film!

Thank you NetGalley for this ARC!

Absolutely loved this book. A little predictable - but I still couldn't put it down. It really made me want to listen to all the music she mentioned - and made me stop to realize the effect music has on our upbringing and our lives in general. Highly recommend.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. Author Chris Cander did with words what a phenomenal conductor does with his orchestra - create a moving story that the audience cannot help but be swept up into, riding a magical wave through all the ups and downs, shocking reveals, and poignant emotional realizations. Through the mysterious landscape of Death Valley National Park and the backdrop built by little known piano influencers Bluthner and Scriabin, the plot tackled so much more than I thought it possibly could. Turning the last page left me breathless and waiting for an encore.

A Bluthner piano is the focus of Weight of a Piano. I'm sure you're aware of how heavy a piano is. The story embodies the physical weight and the psychological mental weight of the piano. Two women are connected to it, Katya in the Soviet union in 1962, and Clara in California in 2012. Alternating between the two women, the story of the piano is told, the building of it, how and why it traveled so far, what it means to each one. It's beautiful and well written but seriously sad. I liked it less because it's depressing. The characters are sympathetic and complex and sad. The overall read is good, but it's also a downer. Thanks to NetGalley for an arc in exchange for an honest review.



Katya 1962. Clara 2012

"The Weight of a Piano" is an engaging multi-generational tale. The characters have real depth, the musical underpinning is evocative, and the relationships reveal life lessons and deep bonds. Recommended!

Chris Cander brings us a multifaceted work of art in Weight of a Piano. We follow the lives affected by both their love of music and the ownership of this upright 500 plus pound Bluthner piano. The soundboard is built of timber harvested in Romanian forests in the late 19th century, cured properly over many years to provide the perfect depth and purity of tone, and installed into this quality upright piano manufactured in Germany in the first decade of the twentieth century.

The blind German brought it with him, this Bluthner piano, when he fled his service in the Waffen-SS to Zagorsk, Russia before his half-Jewish ethnicity could be uncovered during Hitler's cleansing of his military in 1941. He brought with him this piano pure of tone and depth but easily detuned by the anger carried in the the blind man's fingers. He played often and loud in the apartment block, classical music, derges and wild, pounding discord, for the most part at night. Many of the other apartment residents found this disquieting and offensive. "It is ALWAYS night to me!" was his defense. Ekaterine Katya Dmitrievna, 6 or 7 years old and apartmented down the hall from the German, cannot remember a time when his music didn't sway her into rest, and often she would slip into his apartment behind her piano-tuning father to hear him play. At her request, he would often play for her the Russian piece Piano Sonata no. 2 in G-sharp Minor by Alexander Scriabin, first movement. Katya alone loved the German. After his death she found she could only fall asleep under the piano.

And before he ended his life with his German military issued Mauser HSc, he gifted his piano to Katya because, he said, even a blind man could see the music beating in her heart. The piano took many years to follow Katya via her professional dancer friend Boris as she, her husband, Mikhail Zeldin and son Grigoriy immigrated from a starving Russia to Italy and then to California, but they did connect there, she and the Bluthner, and she felt a lightening of her heart, found herself able to pull out of the years-long depression leaving her homeland and family and the abuse of her husband laid on her soul. All that had kept her going was her son and his need for her, but the belated arrival of the piano helped. For a time.

Clara Lundy received the piano from her father for her 12th birthday, only a couple of days before her mother and father, both professors at UCLA, died in a house fire. Because she was spending the night with a friend and the piano was having work done on the damaged lid, they alone survived the loss of the whole of the Lundy's Santa Monica world. Clara had nothing left - no photos, no home, her only remaining family her father's older sister Ila and her husband Jack, who took her into their home in Bakersfield, California. Carla grew up working in her Uncle's garage, becoming an adept mechanic but despite years of lessons, only a lover of music rather than a master player. But the glossy black upright was her touchstone to the past, the family she had lost, so was the heart of her world as her aunt and uncle also passed away and her adopted world was sold to pay their medical bills. leaving Clara very alone. Again.

Where will the Bluthner take her next? Is it a touchstone or a curse? Only time will tell....

The weight of a Piano is an excellent, very compelling read, and I appreciate being introduced to both the craftsmanship that goes into a fine piano and the work of Chris Cander and Alexander Scriabin. This is a novel I am pleased to refer to family and friends.

I received a free electronic copy of this work from Netgalley, Chris Cander, and Knopf publishers in exchange for an honest review. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me.

Read this book as it is unlike any other. The description of the building of a piano in Germany, the appearance of it in Russia after WW II, the surfacing of it in California...what more can you want? The story is told in the voices of Katya, Russian, and Clara, Californian. What the Bluthner piano means to both of them at different periods. The unexpected conclusion is another reason to read this novel.

This book was provided to me for free from Net Galley in exchange for a fair review.

Chris Cander starts out this book with a mind blowingly good first chapter. The problem with introducing a book with such a beautifully written first chapter is that you lead the readers to believe that every chapter after that is going to be of that same tone and quality. Unfortunately the remainder of the book just did not take me there again.

With that said, this book had its moments and was technically written well with two stories playing out side by side. The first story is that of a young pianist in Russia who falls into a relationship with an abusive husband. This part of the story is particularly tragic. It is also problematic. When we first meet Katya she is an independent woman who is making her way and knows what she wants. This somehow dissipates as she becomes involved with the man who becomes her husband. Though this happens in real life all the time, it was hard to buy into her total acceptance of her plight when she had a strong family to support her, good friends and had up to this point been pretty self sufficient. Her fall into a life of depression and solitude with only her music to bring her solace could have been better if we had experienced some of her internal conflicts more. By the time her husband does the unthinkable and separates her from her only friend, her piano, readers are clearly left wondering what the benefits are to staying with such a person and what has happened to Katya's common sense. The motivations in this story needed more attention.

The other story that is interwoven throughout is Clara's, the owner of a piano given to her by her father before his death. Her story is fairly typical. What is not typical is her connection throughout the story to Katya's experience. Though the inner workings of Clara's psychological problems and issues feel telegraphed and transparent, the descriptive details of her trip to follow her piano on a journey through Death Valley is beautifully written and leaves you wishing for deeper connections within the story.

The ending to this book was also problematic for a variety of reasons. A personified reflection from the piano's point of view was out of place and odd since the object this story is based on is not personified prior to this chapter. The amount of time it takes for Clara to come to the story's final conclusion is frustrating as the reader can already guess where things are going.

So, while the story is an interesting one and the writing is at times quite beautifully, the structures and revelations of Cander's story about how a piano touches several lives and thus becomes a living container of history and emotions is a bit predictable. The story needed deeper connections to the humans of the story. I wanted to know more about the characters that were mere reflections in the story and just did not get it. Clara's point of view was the dominant story story and sadly also the least interesting.

Clara and Katya are linked across time and space by a Bluthner piano. If you've ever wondered about how a piano is made, Cander details this fascinating process, this making the piano as much of a character as the two women. Two women who could not be more different. Or are they? The former Soviet Union and Bakersfield, California are also vastly different but that piano- it endures. It's also a tough nut to move, which is key to the novel. I liked Clara, who has faced much adversity in her life and works- wait for it- as a mechanic-in part because she felt so real. Thanks to Netgalley for the the arc. While this type of plot is always popular (woman discovers her past), Cander has done an especially nice job with it.

This was a beautiful novel! I enjoyed the way the characters’ real emotions were depicted, not just glossed over. This is another novel that exceeded my expectations of it! The story is about the piano that Katya received when she was a young girl in the Soviet Union. Katya is forced to leave behind her beloved piano when she comes to America with her husband. Many years later, Clara becomes the owner of this same piano. Katya and Clara and their emotions of joy, humor, pain, and loss are depicted in a wonderful way through their mesmerizing stories. The storyline is about the different layers of the different stories of the people who were influenced by the piano in their lives. Along the way, the story is both beautiful and heartbreaking at times.

“Now, stop with the crying before your misery becomes contagious.”

The Weight of a Piano is a heavy one in this latest novel by Chris Cander. The story begins with Julies Blüthner (maker and founder of Blüthner piano and factory in Leipzig Germany) walking through the forest high in the Romanian mountains searching for the perfect tree for his creations. One such piano will be given to Ekaterina “Katya” Dmitrievna when she befriends a sad, elderly German musician. “The music was proof of his torment. He was a monster, a demon, and ogre. Katya loved him.” So too begins her passion for music, and her talent leads her to become herself a musician as she grows up in the Soviet Union. The piano becomes as much the love of her life as anyone. Then she meets Mikhail Zelden, whose studying civil engineering, ‘very important work’, and wonders “what would it be like to love him?” This love will take her to America, where the life she lived before resembles nothing like the one she and Mikhail are forced to make with their child. The piano is left behind in Russia, for a while, Mikhail promises, only until he can finagle a way to deliver his wife her beloved instrument which is no easy feat. The piano is the one thing that keeps Katya sane, that eases her suffering, the touching of keys an emotional release that’s become her lifeblood.

It’s 2012 and we meet Clara living in California , current owner of the Blüthner, gifted to her by her father when she was only 12, the old thing now collecting dust and unplayed in her guest bedroom until her relationship comes to an end and she must find another place to live. She is desperate to sell it, no room for the piano to go, it’s become baggage she’d be better off unloading, though it remains the only tie to her father, whose tragic death in a mysterious fire along with her cold, distant mother left her orphaned when she was young. What does she, a mechanic, need the Blüthner for anyway when she can’t even play the thing, as her ex reminded her constantly. Where Katya found sanctuary with the piano, for Clara it was in her uncle’s garage, sent to live with he and her aunt after her parents deaths, burying her shocking grief by learning about the inner workings of automobiles, if only she better understood her own insides. Reluctant to commit to any boyfriend, she finds herself alone again, and worse she impulsively sold the Blüthner to a man named Greg Zeldin, whose already sent people from New York to pick it up. Striking a deal to rent it to him, she breaks her hand, making it impossible for her to work, at the worst time possible. Soon she finds herself journeying to Death Valley, where the photographer plans to complete a series of photos with the Blüthner as his main subject, her mechanic skills could be of use in the middle of nowhere, a handy excuse. Less than enthused about the plan, it may well be just what she needs to get her head on straight, pull her life into some semblance of order again.

Tormented by her childhood still at 26, the fights and silences between her parents, her own mother’s mysterious bottomless dissatisfaction with their little family of three, Clara slowly opens up to Greg and discovers he too is haunted by his past. As his own story begins to take shape, it dawns on the reader why the Blüthner is vital to his work, cathartic even. As the two become closer they begin to find clarity and meaning in things that happened in their childhoods. Connections are made that can only be formed with an adult mind. What they learn of each other may be key to release them from the burden of their pain.

The story swims back and forth between Clara’s tale and Katya’s, from her time in Russia and the early days of her blossoming love and marriage to Mikhail, to the hardships of their lives as immigrants, it’s damning affects on their son. I enjoyed Katya’s story the most, I could have read a book about her and Mikhail and been just as sated. The ending was beautifully symbolic and I was surprised and proud of Clara’s choice. You don’t have to be interested in pianos to enjoy this novel, nor be a musician of any sort. It is a book about dreams that die beneath the brutal harshness of reality and destiny. One moment can change everything, even sour great love. It is a tale of family dysfunction, loss, grief, music, homeland and how our childhood can haunt us far into the future. Definitely a good read!

Publication Date: January 22, 2019

Knopf

Doubleday Publishing

This was a great read. It's not subtle, the book is called The Weight of Piano, and it about the physical and psychological weight of a piano as a metaphor. Despite this it is not heavy handed,perhaps because it is so well written, with characters that are likeable, flawed and interesting. I notice when I'm reading books that are clumsily written I highlight passages. there was none of that here - the dialogue is smooth flowing, the descriptions of scenery beautifully done and appropriate and the plot moves at just the right pace. I was very happy, after I finished the book, to find out that Chris Cander has already published some other novels, which I am looking forward to reading.

Thank you for the advanced copy of this book. I absolutely loved this story. This book has alternating timelines starting off in Russia in the 20th Century and Katya who plays the piano and. The second timeline is current times on the west coast with Clara who owns a piano that her father gave to her just days before he died and she has traveled with ever since. The way everything everything came together at the end was quite good. Each chapter kept me wanting to read more and more. The character development was strong and the symbolism of the Piano was written perfectly. I wish only the best for the future of Clara, I wish I could meet her. .

One does indeed feel the weight of the piano through the whole story. Its weight has different meanings to each of the characters. A burden, a barrier, an albatross, a blessing and beloved. The author did a fine job of weaving the stories together and taking us on their intertwined journeys. I didn’t feel there were any huge surprises, but well worth a read to see how and why the threads come together. 3 1/2 stars

This was a pretty miserable book. Almost every character is depressed and unhappy and doesn't really know what to do with themselves. I trudged along because it was good enough that I had to see how it ended, but it was a two star book until the end saved it. I did love the descriptions of music though.

This novel has a piano as the symbol of art, change, heartbreak and redemption. It is an antique Bluthner piano that propels the story. Clara is the owner of this old Bluthner and is the custodian of its memories. It is a love-hate relationship and her broken hand becomes a catalyst to push the plot and bring together the people who are the descendants af those who loved this instrument.

When Clara decides to sell the piano, she is introduced to Greg and we see the history of the instrument unwind. I must admit I could not be engaged by this story and I found no satisfaction In the author’s bizarre choice of an ending.

Yes, the reader ends with hope for Clara, but i still felt unsatisfied with this novel.

What intrigued me about "The Weight of a Piano" is the mystery of how a turn of the 20th century Bluthner piano could start out in the Soviet Union and end up in Bakersfield, CA. It's an upright, at least not a grand, but nonetheless a piano of any kind is a massive, delicate object and moving it from one continent to another is a feat. I'm not sure I bought the reasons in the novel, but I was ready to suspend disbelief and go along with Chris Cander's story.

Where the piano has been before 1962 is not revealed, but that's the year 8 year old Katya inherits it from a mysterious neighbor. The piano becomes her voice: she plays it with such expression that she may be headed for a professional career.

In 2012, Clara is a talented mechanic in a car repair shop in Bakersfield, a place as blasted hot as the Soviet Union is sharp with cold. She has a piano she does not play, but treasured because it was a gift from her father right before he died. She has schlepped it from one apartment to another and is now wondering it it's time to sell it and use the money to live on while she recovers from a hand injury, broken while moving the piano the last time.

Where will this go? That's what's good about this novel--it is very hard to see where it's going or how these two stories are going to meet or even if they are. Even when you finally have a pretty good idea of where it will end up, how is that going to happen?

This is a good novel, enjoyable, and more of an indication of the author's potential than an example of a writer working at her peak. I look forward to Cander's next novel, and it will be a pleasure to watch her skill grow.

Thanks to Knopf and Netgalley for letting me enjoy this book!

3.5 stars